It’s the year 2094. Two decades have passed since a wave of depression swept over the world and fostered a war that concluded with a ban on technological devices. A young filmmaker sets out to make a documentary on life after the war, and the princess of an African kingdom gets involved, professionally and emotionally.

Born to Swiss and Kenyan parents, Damien Hauser made his fourth feature film, Memory of Princess Mumbi, when he was only 24 – a prolific career aided by his ability to make the most out of small budgets, small teams and resourceful tools. One such tool, at the center of his film and the film-within-the-film, is AI. Used to shape the gestures of the townspeople his protagonist shoots for his documentary, or to create and imagine visually striking scenarios, the use of AI in a post-digital world is often questioned by his characters. Can AI take over the artistic process? Or are there things from the human experience that are ungraspable by technology?

Part mockumentary, part romance, part adventure film, Memory of Princess Mumbi is a wholly original and imaginative film that dedicates itself to building multiple worlds without losing touch of the humans at its center.